I hope your question is answered below. If you have a question about the website that isn't already answered here, please click here.
How much does it cost to work with a personal trainer in a gym?
Personal training costs $55-$75 per session at most gyms. If you buy a personal training package of 18 or more sessions, you may be able to get them for $49 a session. This is why the people who most need personal training often cannot afford it.
Does personal training usually include nutrition counseling?
No. Most personal trainers recommend the use of a dietician for nutrition advice.
How much does it cost to work with a dietician?
This varies depending on where you live and the services you use. Please check into it. It isn't cheap.
How much money can I save by training online?
You can save hundreds of dollars per month by training online.
How often do I need to access the website in order to get good results?
If at all possible, try to access the site daily. This will allow you to see your exercises for the day, and record your food journal. If you are not able to access the site daily, you can still get great results. Just keep track of your calorie and fiber intake for each day and enter the information when you do log on. You can look back on previous days to get any workouts you've missed. Although the program is set up for daily workouts, you can still get good results by combining some of the workouts and exercising less frequently.
What kind of results can I expect?
This program is designed to work with your body's individual needs. If you stick to the program, you can expect to lose two or more pounds of fat per week. Because you will be gaining muscle, there is a chance your weight will drop by less than two pounds a week, but your inches will drop quickly. Most clients also notice that their clothes start fitting better within a couple of weeks. Other common "side effects" are more energy, better attitude, less joint pain, increased flexibility, and more.
What equipment will I need?
For your convenience, you can now purchase everything you need to follow the MyFitnessTrainer.com program right here: RECOMMENDED PRODUCTS.
Here is a list of items you will need: for measurements, you will need to have access to a regular bathroom scale, a measuring tape, and a set of calipers.
For the first week, you won't need any equipment for the exercises. This will give you time to get an exercise ball and a resistance band. These can be found at most sports stores, some department stores, and discount stores (or at the link above, which will take you to Amazon.com, which seems to have the best prices and inventory.) The balls have sizing charts on the boxes, but I recommend a medium sized ball for almost everyone. The bands can be found in many different levels of resistance. It may be helpful to buy one thinner (easier) band and one thicker band. If you're an experienced weightlifter, or are very strong, get a thick band. To start, you'll probably want a band labeled medium. If you are very strong, or experienced with weight lifting, get one that is heavy.
Although you can succeed on the program without getting a food scale, I highly recommend getting one. It'll make food measurements much easier. Digital scales are the easiest to use, but a regular scale will work, too. Again, you can find this at the link listed above.
How will I know what to eat? Can I get an itemized list of the foods I should be eating?
Because your fat-burning machine runs best when fueled with a variety of foods, there is no list of "allowed foods." Instead, it's important to try to eat as many different foods as possible. When you keep track of your fiber intake, you'll automatically end up eating whole foods and high-quality foods. Here is one list of high-quality foods to include in your choices, but be creative. The food opportunities on this program are endless.
Why does the site only track calories and fiber?
Although it would be useful to track every nutrient you eat, it wouldn't be practical. I've found that clients get great results when tracking their calorie and fiber intake. The calorie intake assures that you take in enough energy to fuel your fat-burning machine without a surplus. The fiber intake assures that the food that you are eating is a high-quality fuel. Even though you don't track your fat intake, it is important to avoid eating too many saturated fats. It's also important to eat enough of the healthy unsaturated fats. Good fats include avocado, canola and olive oils, fish, nuts and more. Saturated fats are found in meat and butter, among other sources. Just read the food labels. It's also important to make sure that you're getting enough protein. Most people naturally get enough protein when they eat a high-fiber diet. Just make sure to eat at least three servings per week of legumes, soy products, fish, meat or eggs.
What if I miss a day on my food journal?
If you think you know about how many calories and fiber grams you had that day, just go ahead and enter the totals. If you have no idea what the calorie and fiber counts were, you'll need to check the box that says that the journal is not accurate for the day.
What if I miss a workout?
You can select any previous day on your program to go back and do the workout later. If you never get a chance to do the workout, just move on. Do your best, and your body will reward you with good results.
What if I have technical problems with the website?
Please email the website support staff at support@myfitnesstrainer.com.
What are forums? How can I access them?
The forums are an opportunity for you to get in touch with other people with similar goals. They are free and available to My Fitness Trainer clients as well as guests to the site. All you need to do is set up a username and password. Just click on the link to fitness forums on the home page.
Is the site only for weight loss? Can I use it to gain weight/ muscle mass?
This site was definitely designed for a weight loss goal. The majority of personal training clients are trying to lose excess weight. If you are trying to gain weight, you can still benefit from the site. Unfortunately, the calorie goals will be generated for weight loss, so you will need to ignore them. In order to gain weight, you will need to eat significantly more food than you usually do. You can stick to the fiber and exercise goals but eat more calories and gain weight. However, we recommend that you go to a site that is specifically designed for your goals. If the demand is great enough, we may eventually add a "weight gain" program to the site.
Who is the site for?
This site is for women and men who need to lose excess body fat. It is designed for adults of all ages. Teenagers can also benefit from the site, but their progress should be supervised. Teenagers need their parent's permission in order to use the site. This site can be adapted to work for people with all kinds of different needs and/or disabilities. If you have a disability, please ask your physical therapist or physician to tell you which types of movements you should avoid. The site does not adapt exercises to your specific needs; this will be your responsibility.
Who created the site?
Why, your fitness trainer, of course! My name is Annette. I have been weightlifting for the past 14 years. I love to swim, play tennis, and take my baby on walks. I'm learning how to play golf, but I'm not very good yet. I created this site because I realized that the people who could afford personal training weren't always the ones who needed it the most. I wanted to make personalized fitness training available to everyone. Here is more information about your fitness trainer (me).
Why choose this website over other weight-loss websites?
Most other weight-loss websites are like online weight-loss books. Weight loss books are useful, but they can only work in generalities. They are not personalized to your particular needs. This was a weakness of books, and a potential strength of websites. Surprisingly enough, this is the first site to fully take advantage of this opportunity.
Instead of being told that women should eat 1200 calories and men should eat 1600, this site will tell you personally how many calories you will need. This is very important, because you may need more or fewer calories than the average woman. Diets give you random calorie goals; My Fitness Trainer gives you personalized goals and feedback. You can expect better results when you are working with your unique body, and not working against it.
My Fitness Trainer will help you to take it one day at a time. Just like when you work with a personal trainer in a gym, your workouts will progress as you do. You won't be doing the same old exercises every day. Instead you will always be doing something new and challenging yourself in new ways. Bored exercisers quit. Bored muscles quit growing. At My Fitness Trainer.com, you won't have a problem with either.
How can I add my before and after picture to the success library?
Congratulations! If you're asking this question, it means that you've reached your goal. Wasn't that easy and fun? By now, fitness is probably not only a habit for you, but it's also a necessity.
If you would like to share your success with others, please email a digital copy of your before picture as well as your after picture to successphotos@myfitnesstrainer.com. Don't forget to visit the fitness forums to share encouragement and advice with those who are still on their way.
If you have an "after after" picture, please say so in your email. We will find your before and after pictures on the site, and add the additional after picture. Good job- you didn't quit even after reaching your original goal!
How can I share my success with others, and encourage them in their efforts?
First of all, I'm proud of you for asking this question. Sharing your success and encouraging others is a wonderful thing to do. There are a lot of different ways to do it.
Try visiting the fitness forums (accessible from the home page) and sharing tips for success.
Find an email buddy who you can support.
Send referral invitations to the people in your email address books so they can enjoy the site too. (Check the referral link at the top of the page for referral rewards for you!)
If you work out at a gym, go out of your way to welcome newcomers. Help them figure out how to use the equipment. Show them new exercises. Recommend the site. Know when to recommend they work with a personal trainer or physical therapist.
20. How does my online trainer know how many calories and fiber grams to recommend to me?
This is determined originally according to your lean body mass. Your lean body mass is made up of muscle, bone, and other non-fat weight. The higher your lean body mass, the more calories you are likely to burn in a day. This is why men usually (but not always) get to eat more than women. If you gain significant amounts of lean body mass, your calorie goals will actually go up.
If you accurately record your food or calorie and fiber intake all week, and include accurate measurements, your online fitness trainer can determine what your body did with the calories. Because a pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories and a pound of muscle has about 600, it's just a matter of mathematics to figure out how many too many or too few calories you ate this week.
The scientific nature of this technique makes it much more effective than the calorie guessing that most weight-loss books and sites use. Because of the scientific nature of the technique, it is very important that you enter accurate information. If you think that your information is not accurate, please click on the button for "inaccurate info."
21. What if my scale weight stays the same but my "fat weight" drops? What if I'm going down sizes but not losing weight?
Scale weight is not an accurate portrayal of your fat loss results. Scale weight doesn't just represent your fat weight, but also your lean body mass. Lean body mass is a very good thing. It is made up of muscle and bone. Even if you lose two pounds of fat in a week, you may gain a pound of muscle. If this happens, the scale will only show a 1-pound weight loss. Most people would assume that this is not as good as had the scale shown a 2-pound weight loss. On the contrary, this is good news. Gaining lean body mass (muscle) means that your fat-burning machine is becoming more powerful. This means that your calorie goals will start to become higher- you can eat more food and continue to lose the same amount of fat! This is much healthier and more effective than diets which cause muscle loss (so the scale weight drops more quickly) and you need to eat less and less. When you lose fat weight, but gain muscle, you could weigh exactly the same, but still wear smaller sizes! This is success.
22. When I try to use my food page, it loads an old page from a week ago. How do I get it to show the right page?
It sounds like your browser might be caching files to speed up the page loading process. This obviously doesn't work on pages that don't stay the same.
Try this if you use Internet Explorer:
Click on the "Tools" tab at the very top of your screen. Then click on "Internet Options." That should automatically open the "General" tab, and you should see "Temporary Internet Files" as one of the options. Inside that box, click on "Delete Files." This will only delete files that your browser is caching to make things load faster.
As soon as you do that, you should be able to hit "refresh" or re-load the page and it should come up looking right.
23. How do I sign up for a free membership to My Fitness Trainer?
And here are the latest questions members have been asking in 2010:
Here are the top ten most frequently asked questions about the MyFitnessTrainer.com program:
1. Why won't the program track my carbs? (or fat, or calories burned through exercise, etc...)
History tells us that the simpler the fat loss program, the better the chances that you'll stick with it. In the beginning of a fat loss program, it may be fun to track everything under the sun, but eventually you'll run out of time and energy.
MyFitnessTrainer.com tracks only the necessary information to assure great results. We've found that tracking your calories and fiber intake are sufficient. This is because your fiber intake goal helps you to choose healthier foods automatically, and the calorie goal helps you to burn more than you take in.
Your calorie goal is compared to your fat and muscle losses/gains for the week. The math is automatically done to give you a new weekly calorie goal to match your changing metabolism. This allows you to avoid plateaus and assure consistent fat loss.
2. Why aren't I able to list extra exercise I've done beyond the goal each day?
It's definitely fun to get credit for your efforts, so I understand why you might wish for an "extra credit" exercise box. You definitely deserve congratulations for doing more than what was required on the program on any given day. You can record extra exercise in your online journal (found under Misc. in the Member Menu).
The workout requirements for the MyFitnessTrainer.com program are very simple and take very little time. This is designed to be achievable. You should be able to follow the program for the rest of your life with little time investment. Consistency is much more important than intensity when it comes to lifelong weight loss and maintenance. In other words, the tortoise beats the hare. So, go ahead and do that "extra credit" when you're able. But never miss your basic workout and be sure to check those three boxes every day.
3. How does the program know how many calories I'm burning when it doesn't let me track all of my exercise?
This is a great question, and one of my favorite to answer. MyFitnessTrainer.com was cleverly designed to track your calories burned in a much simpler, yet much more accurate way than the competition. Here's how:
Your body is a journal. It tracks everything you do by storing and/or burning fat, while building and/or losing muscle. Each pound of fat represents about 3,500 calories, and each pound of muscle about 600. So, through your weekly measurements, we can see how many calories your body burned that week. We compare the calories in (your food journal,) and calories out (as revealed by your measurements,) and we adjust for fat loss.
This method is much more accurate than trying to guess calories burned according to activity. This is because it's impossible to track all of your activity each day, and even more impossible to calculate exactly how many calories you're burning doing each activity. (Activity calorie expenditure charts are just estimations and the values vary wildly from person to person.)
4. How does MyFitnessTrainer.com know how many calories to recommend to me each week?
See answer #3 for the long story. Basically, it calculates your calories in during the past week, your calories out, and your metabolic rate for the past week. Assuming that last week was a decent predictor of your metabolic rate this week, it recommends a calorie goal.
5. I feel hungry at my calorie goal. How can I get more calories?
First, make sure to eat high-quality, high-fiber foods. They are more filling, so you will feel less hungry on the same number of calories.
If that doesn't work and you're still hungry, you may need to up your calorie goal. You can do this by exercising more and eating more. For example, you can do an extra 30 minutes of cardio each day and up your calorie intake by 200 per day. The program will tell you that you're going over your goal, but just ignore that for a week. Next week, if the increased cardio helped up your metabolism, your calorie goal will be higher.
Anytime you eat more than your goal, be sure to enter the accurate daily calories in your Daily Foods page. This will give your program the accurate information it needs to adjust your calorie goal for the next week (including raising it!)
It's important to raise your calorie goal in this manner whenever you feel under fed. This will allow your metabolism to grow and grow. For an example, check out Nicci's weight loss before and after picture. She followed the MyFitnessTrainer.com program and built up her metabolism to the point where she was still losing weight while eating 1,000 more calories than before!
6. I only lost one pound this week, but my program upped my calorie goal anyway. What gives?
Remember that your fitness program tracks your fat loss/gain and muscle loss/gain, not just your total weight. It is possible that while you only lost 1 total pound, you really lost 2 pounds of fat and gained a pound of muscle. This is even better than losing two pounds of fat without a muscle gain. Remember, muscle burns calories, so the more muscle the better.
Your MyFitnessTrainer.com calorie goal is designed to continue to encourage fat loss and muscle gain. This is all part of the long-term perspective: you want to lose fat while revving up your metabolism to keep the fat off.
7. I noticed that the program gives me one day off per week. How can I change the day?
You may want your day off on Sundays, but your program gives you Wednesdays off. If this is really important to you, it's fine to work around it. Just do a cardio and strength training workout on your day off, and check the boxes. Then, on Sunday (or your preferred day of rest,) check the boxes for the workouts, but take the day off. To get the workout for your Wednesday workout, just choose any two exercises from the Exercise Library. Don't worry about which muscle group to work- just work whichever part of your body doesn't currently feel sore.
8. Where can I find a list of foods to eat/avoid on this diet?
This is not a diet. You don't have to eat or avoid any certain foods. In fact, I highly recommend that you continue to eat (healthier versions of) your favorite foods while following the MyFitnessTrainer.com program. This is because the program is designed to keep you slim for life, and diets don't do that. The idea is to enjoy the foods you eat and the new lifestyle you are living- that way you'll never need to be "done" with a "diet." For those of you who really want a food list, here is a list of some healthy food ideas. Believe me, it's nowhere near to all-inclusive. Be creative, and enjoy your meals.
9. How can I make food journaling easier?
Your Daily Foods page allows you to save food information after you enter it once. This is very helpful, as most people eat the same foods often. Once you've entered the information once, you can always pull it out of your "favorite foods" drop-down list, and the site will automatically enter the calorie and fiber info for you. Just change the amount eaten as necessary, and the site will adjust the calories.
If you're not at a computer during the day, another option is to carry a notebook with you and just keep a running total of calories and fiber. Then you can enter this information without all of the food details. Just be sure to check the little box at the bottom of the food journal section that says "check this box to enter the totals only." Then hit submit after you enter your totals.
Always remember to hit "submit" after entering foods or totals. Nothing will be saved unless you hit the submit button.
10. My calorie goal suddenly dropped dramatically for no obvious reason. What happened?
Chances are that you made an error in recording your Daily Foods page. If you forgot to enter your foods one day or forgot to hit "submit," it will mess up your calorie goal. If you think this has happened, check the box on the Daily Foods page that says "click here if you think your calorie logs for the past week have been inaccurate." This will reset the calorie goal back to normal and allow you to continue your program. Just be very careful to accurately enter your calories this week, and the new calorie goal next week will be accurate again.
